Date Night! At Home…with kids?!?

I have been working so hard to make sure that my girls have been taken care of emotionally during this self-quarantine, but I wanted to do something for my husband. Both of my daughters love to set up a “Problem-Solving Workshop” where they ask my husband and I to bring our problems to them and they brainstorm solutions for us. I absolutely love this, and it was Squid’s original idea a few years ago. Every so often, it makes a comeback, and my husband and I scramble to come up with problems for them to solve.

This time, I decided to bring the idea of hosting a Date Night for Daddy to them. They helped me plan things out – including offering to serve us as waitresses, distract my husband while I cook, and entertain themselves while we ate. It looked great on paper (or in our case, shared Google Doc), but would it work?

After we got done watching our afternoon movie (or the down time where I get my work done), Squid tried to talk her daddy into going downstairs to play a card game with her. It was a tough sell, but we finally got there. I think my husband finally figured out we were trying to get rid of him from upstairs!

I cooked some seafood we had in the freezer (yay for cleaning out the freezer), and it was perfect since Squid is allergic. I had some mac & cheese individual cups that I made for the girls. While my husband was downstairs, I got dressed up just like I would for a normal date. Wormy got dressed up as a waitress, and went down to retrieve Squid and her dad. When my husband got upstairs, I told him what was going on and he decided he was under dressed.

I left detailed instructions for Squid, and the girls became the waitstaff. We had sparkling cider for our beverage, and then the girls served us our appetizer. While we ate that, they finished mixing up their mac & cheese and brought it downstairs. They came up and served us our main course, then went back downstairs to eat. Of course, this is the first time EVER they ate their meal quickly, but they were excited, so I didn’t complain. Squid serenaded us with live piano music while Wormy cleared the table. They then brought us our desserts and went downstairs to clean up their dishes.

All in all, it was a lot of fun. We got a little adult time, which we found out we didn’t have much to talk about since we’ve been in the same place for the last week. We actually spent most of the time talking about how good the service was at our little restaurant. When the meal was through, I made sure to tip each girl a dollar. They were definitely the most attentive waitstaff I’ve ever had. 😀

Sorry I didn’t take any pictures. I was busy with my cute date.

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Going to Paris…virtually

In Day 2 of our touring the world virtually, we went to France. I wasn’t ‘officially’ working today, but as I’m sure some of you are experiencing, working from home means less boundaries on time. I’m still working on that…

We started off our day with breakfast – a tube of crescents that I popped some mini chocolate chips inside. When my husband and I went to Paris in 2007, we ate that every day for breakfast – though it is highly unlikely that they were crescents from a tube!

Good morning, Delicious!

Next, we toured my scrapbook from our trip so the girls could see what we did – touring Paris, Normandy, Reims, and Versailles/Monet’s gardens. Wormy got super excited to see that we went to see the real Water Lillies paintings in Paris, as they had just made their own versions of that art in her kindergarten art class. Then she was over the moon when we showed her our pictures from Monet’s actual gardens. Now she wants to go in person.

Wormy’s work
This picture is not even half as beautiful as it is in real life

We moved on to some virtual tours. We visited my favorite stop when we were in Paris – the Water Lillies exhibit in Musee de l’Orangerie: https://www.musee-orangerie.fr/en/article/water-lilies-virtual-visit The girls loved imagining themselves sitting on the benches soaking in the whole work!

Next up, we visited the Louvre virtually through this site: https://www.youvisit.com/tour/louvremuseum Wormy kept laughing whenever the sculptures didn’t have arms! They really liked looking at the glass pyramid from the outside and then when it was the ceiling above us.

Our last virtual tour was of the Eiffel Tower. This tour wasn’t quite as good, as it is actually just a view from the sky above the Eiffel Tower. However, we did have fun zooming in on the tower itself, as you could distinctly see the two viewing platforms with people on them. We also were able to find many of Paris’s landmarks from the views, so that was pretty neat, too. I know there are a lot of different links for this, so here’s the one we found: https://www.360cities.net/image/view-from-the-eiffel-tower. If you don’t like that one, or are looking for others, just pop it into Google.

Since I had 6 years of French between high school and college, I taught the girls how to count to 20, and we had a conversation consisting of greetings, how are you, and how to ask and answer what their names are. I also taught them a cute counting rhyme (“un-deux-trois, ou est le roi?”) and we listened to some French music from my collection. My husband busted out his National Guard berets, and the girls put those on. They were adorable! I had them dress in red, white, and blue, as those are the colors of the French flag, as well.

We talked about the Euro, and I showed them pictures of the paper money and coins. We compared what they use vs what we have (they use coins for 1 and 2 euros instead of paper, their coins are different denominations, etc). I just used Wikipedia for this, as it had a great picture.

My husband and I made chicken crepes for lunch and we had to make dessert crepes as well. The girls LOVED them. Thank goodness I have an awesome crepe maker my mother-in-law got me for Christmas a long time ago. That thing is AWESOME and so easy! We also had sparkling cider, since wine and champagne are big exports for France. The girls said they felt pretty fancy. They even said “Merci” after the meal.

Love this crepe maker!!!
Yummy nutella and cherry pie filling crepes – we also made traditional dessert crepes.

After lunch, we watched “Ratatouille” since that movie takes place in France. This counted as our down time for the day! The girls got some playing in outside while my husband and I were cooking the crepes. I was going to have them play boule (bocci ball for all of you non-French types), but we ran out of time today since we took a walk instead.

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Going to Hawaii…Virtually

So Squid, Wormy, and the Husband are all on spring break this week. I am not. Since this is an awfully long stretch of time for them to be left to their own devices, I have planned some virtual vacations for them. I am going to share them all with you in case you are in need of some resources to make it through a long break.

Today, we are traveling to Hawaii. My husband and I went in 2009, so we are more than happy to share our vacation photos with the girls. When we got up this morning, we put on our Hawaiian shirts, leis, and bright colors. This helped our mood since this was the view outside:

For breakfast, we had the ever-popular SPAM and Eggs. We went to the Spam museum in Minnesota last summer, so we have a case of the variety pack of Spam. What better time to bust that out than self-quarantine?!?

yum, yum

After we finished breakfast, my husband showed the girls our vacation pictures while I did some video conferencing. After that, it was time to enter the world of Virtual Touring. I had a 30 minute “Travel to Hawaii” video that the girls watched, and a video from a helicopter tour we took on Kauai. However, even if you are not owners of this awesomeness, we quickly moved on to more general resources you can access. We visited these two virtual tours of Volcanoes National Park in Hawaii:

https://www.nationalparkstraveler.org/2013/06/take-virtual-tour-hawaii-volcanoes-national-park-video23427 – this is a very cool video of images from the tops of the volcanoes set to some music that Wormy really got excited about. I think the movie was about 3 minutes.

https://artsandculture.withgoogle.com/en-us/national-parks-service/hawaii-volcanoes/nahuku-lava-tube-tour – This was a really neat virtual tour done by a Park Ranger of some of the features of the park. You can click and drag to change your view and click other features to get supplemental materials. We were watching on it from our living room tv while screen mirroring from my ipad. The only reason I mention this is because I was using Google Chrome, and the interactive components did not work until I switched to Safari. Be sure to try it out in a few different browsers if you have trouble. Our favorite part of this was the fly over of the volcano!

After this, we explored two free apps on our Apple TV. The Trip USA app was a favorite, as there was a special on the Spam Jam festival in Hawaii. We also watched a virtual tour of Pearl Harbor. The apps both contain short little videos of different parts of the island, the US, and the world. If Hawaii isn’t your chosen virtual destination, be sure to check out somewhere else!

Squid had gotten a Sea Monsters kit for Christmas a few years ago, and we just hadn’t gotten to growing the little guys yet, so we also started that. I’m scrared…very scared! Haha

Hope this doesn’t eat me in the middle of the night!

By this time, after all of the Virtual travels, we needed to get up and bounce around. It was time to learn to Hula. We watched this YouTube video to learn some basics. We were being a little goofy, as in one of the Apple TV programs we watched, they said the Hula actually began as a way for men to prepare themselves for battle. Squid and I kept joking about getting ready to attack…

We were pretty good at the Kaholo, but I still need help with my Kawelu!!!

Next up the girls had the option of watching “Lilo and Stitch” or “Moana.” The girls chose “Lilo and Stitch,” and I went back to work.

After the movie, we worked on learning some Hawaiian words, through the help of: https://www.trafalgar.com/real-word/hawaiian-words-and-phrases/ There are a few other websites that offer audio files of the pronunciations, but some of them had a big long list of words. We only wanted a few.

Finally, we ended with dinner. My husband made Kalua Pork while I was working. It’s the recipe from the local Hawaiian store in Wauwatosa – Ono Kine Grindz. Basically you take a pork roast, cover it in Hawaiian salt and Wright’s liquid smoke, wrap it in banana leaves and let it do it’s thing in the oven. I’m sure you could just make your favorite pork recipe if you were looking for a meal idea. We served it with canned pineapple chunks to get the Hawaiian feel. Before the girls could eat, we watched performances from a Hawaiian luau through this YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4Z1pqts5N0&feature=youtu.be

During dinner we listened to music by Israel “IZ” KamakawiwoÊ»ole, as he is one of our favorite musicians.

It wasn’t quite the same as going to Hawaii, but I got more work done and the girls didn’t seem to get bored. 🙂

Lisa WernerLeave a comment

How to Have a Weekend In When You’re Used to Being on the Run!

Today was weird in that it was hard to make a ‘weekend’ happen when you’ve already been home all week. We obviously were taking a break from schoolwork, since it is a weekend. But how do you make it seem different when our weekends are usually so busy?

We normally have dance class on Saturday mornings, so I attempted to recreate that for my girls. Squid absolutely LOVES dance class, so much so that she says she wants to be a dance teacher when she grows up. She was getting a little teary-eyed thinking of not having class. I asked the girls to get into their tutus, and meet me in the living room. I had Squid lead us in work on the barre (aka the back of the couch!) and Wormy led the stretches (and boy, is she bendy!!!). Then we practiced their dance class recital songs through the YouTube videos that their teachers have uploaded. I even wore a tutu, which made them laugh.

In the afternoon, we set up a FaceTime with my brother and sister-in-law. We usually do Game Nights with them, and we tried to set up a virtual game afternoon. We had two different versions of Apples to Apples and played that for almost 2 hours. It worked out really well to have different versions, as we couldn’t end up playing duplicate cards then, though I am sure that probability is pretty low with the quantity of cards in the game! It was a lot of fun, and we definitely had as many laughs as we usually do. My favorite part was when my bro & sis needed a snack, so they brought in some chips and salsa. I went to our pantry and did the same! Hahaha. I couldn’t just watch them eat chips & salsa!

After the gaming fun, we went for a short walk. It was cold and breezy out, but it was sunny, so we needed to get out anyway. It started off way colder than we wanted, but by the time we returned, we had worked up enough heat to feel a bit better.

The day actually went pretty quickly. We ended up watching some shows about Log Cabins before bed. We haven’t done much TV watching, so it was nice to cuddle and relax together. How did everyone else do today?

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Coronavirus Break, First Wednesday

We didn’t do a whole lot new today, but we did start a new stress relief idea. We set up a puzzle we had gotten for Christmas on our coffee table in our living room. When we need a break from things, or from each other, we head towards the puzzle table.

For a little while, we thought we might actually finish the 400-piece puzzle. Luckily, it looks like it will last one day longer.

Tomorrow, my girls start their online learning through school. I’m curious how this will all work with my husband and I doing our online teaching….4 of us all trying to do this all at the same time.

Lisa Werner1 Comment

Coronavirus Break, The First Tuesday

Today I was lucky enough to be home, as I don’t usually work on Tuesdays. This meant I was running the household school today! *insert evil laugh*

We started out with a nice, leisurely cleaning project. Only there wasn’t anything leisurely about it. I was on a mission. You know how children seem to grow faster than the new clothes can come in? Well, I decided it was time to go through their entire clothes collection. We actually started with the dreaded mound of clothes on top of the dresser this weekend. Today, I convinced them to tackle two drawers’ worth. We dumped the drawers out in the middle of the living room (eek!), and then worked our way back to putting it all away. It actually wasn’t as terrible as any of us were expecting! Woohoo!

Next up, it was time for ‘writing class.’ Wormy (my kindergartner) traced letters, and Squid (my 4th grader) had a project in Book Creator she had not yet finished for school. No time like the present.

We then moved on to math, which doesn’t feature overly exciting plans from me – both girls just did flashcards (addition for Wormy and multiplication 15s for Squid).

Continuing onward, we worked again on our Junior Ranger packet for the Everglades. Today we learned all about conservation of the ocean. Wormy was having trouble understanding how coral needs clear water in order to continue to live. I demonstrated using super complicated and fancy materials – I plopped an outlet safety plug into a clear bowl of water, used my phone’s flashlight as the sun, and blocked it with my hand. I then asked her if the coral could get my sunlight, and then she understood. It’s days like this that I feel pretty good about my ability to think on my feet. We will see if I am as confident by day 21.

Not gonna lie – it looks nothing like coral!

Next up – time for a little geography. I tested the girls’ knowledge on their state locations by making them color on a blank map the states that we have visited together. We’ve got a little work to do on this, but maybe by next week, they’ll have a better idea of which half of the country they can find Kansas….

Time for some family reading – I read them some chapters from the Humphrey book we started. That hamster is so stinkin’ fun….if you are looking for a book that appeals to a 4-year age gap, check out any of the Humphrey books by Betty G. Birney.

OK, by now they were looking like we needed to get some energy out. Since the rest of the week looks a little…well, less than ideal weather-wise, we needed to get out. Squid led us in her dance class stretches, and Wormy proceeded to show us she probably doesn’t actually have bones in her body (ah, to be flexible again….or even just to move without creaking…). We then took a nice 2 mile walk out in the sun. It felt good. We were goofy of course – butt kicks to the next driveway….jumping jacks in the middle of the road (no cars were out – I was the lookout while Daddy led the workout)…race to the next mailbox. You get the idea.

We got back inside and decided it was time to cook. The girls have a kid subscription box to America’s Test Kitchen that they got for Christmas, and they hadn’t made Goldfish crackers yet. You can easily google a recipe – it was super easy. We only needed butter, cheese, flour, cornstarch, water, and salt. You could easily just cut them in squares (we got a fancy fish cutout with our subscription box).

The fish go marching three by…um…yeah, you get the idea

By that time, I decided school was out for the day, as this all took us from about 9 am until 4 pm. I had a few other things on our list, but we got a little wild and daring cleaning for an hour, so I’ll save them for tomorrow. The word on the street is that I still need to go in to my school to work, but we will see. Seems like things are changing by the minute these days. How’s everyone holding up?

Lisa WernerLeave a comment

Coronavirus Break, The First Monday

So, it’s the first official day of no school, and I have to work. Add to that the fact my husband has online meetings all day for his school, and I found that I had to ‘lesson plan’ for my children today. For those of you looking for ideas, here’s what they are (hopefully) doing:

I have the girls playing school today. Added bonus, they may not even notice they are learning. I left them a list of tasks, and I’m letting them pick which order they do them in. Here are their tasks:

Math: my oldest must go through her math flashcards 3 times, and my kindergartener has a math game to do. (If you don’t already have math flashcards, you can have your kid make their own!) My kindergartener’s math game is a bunch of number papers, with operation signs. She got them from her teacher, but they would be super easy to make.

Just some cardstock…

Social studies: my girls love doing the National Parks Junior Ranger programs, so I asked them to do at least 2 pages in the booklet I printed off for the park we are (hopefully) going to in June. You can find a list of ones you can mail in at this lady’s blog page: http://craftknife.blogspot.com/2018/06/heres-every-national-park-junior-ranger.html

Gym: Both of my girls are dancers, and have been wanting to do the splits for a long time, so I asked my oldest to lead stretches for both of them.

Music/Writing: I asked my oldest to practice piano, and my youngest to practice tracing letters (I have a laminated book of upper and lower case letters for her to trace – I’ll post it in the craft section at a later date).

Chores: My youngest has a massive clothes pile to tackle, so she’ll work on folding those. I asked my youngest to pick one area of her bedroom to clean. I of course gave her some lovely suggestions. I asked them to clean for 30 minutes

Reading: My oldest was asked to read one book to her younger sister, and my youngest gets to read one Superkids book to her older sister.

Lunch: if they get hungry before their Dad gets out of his meetings, I left a jar of peanut butter and some tortillas on the counter. They get to make tortilla roll ups and can play restaurant (“You can order anything you like, as long as it’s a peanut butter roll up!”)

Art: both girls have gotten some craft sets from Christmas that we had been saving for use during spring break, so I’ve got those all set for them.

Recess: Play with your favorite toys!

So, there you have it. I have no idea how it’s going at home, but my husband would have texted by now if the house wasn’t still standing. Stay tuned to find out!

Lisa WernerLeave a comment

Coronavirus Break – Day 1

It’s day 1 of being stuck home due to the Coronavirus outbreak. Things are looking good. The kids are playing well together, you’ve started the dishes…you’ve got this under control. All of the sudden, you all start feeling restless. The kids start bickering. You are all getting tired of each other. You look at the clock – it’s only 8:30 am! What ARE you going to do?

I’m here to help. I will be posting the plans for the day that my kiddos and I are going to be doing. We will get through this together! Be sure to subscribe to the blog to get each post.

Lisa WernerLeave a comment